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Sandra Waxman is the Louis W. Menk Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University. As a developmental scientist, she investigates human development across ages and cultures. Her research adopts a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective, focusing on the concepts, words, and reasoning of infants and young children. Through her primary research lab, the Infant Child Development Center, she examines the acquisition of fundamental human capacities with a focus on conceptual and language development in infants and toddlers. Her work reveals that infants, beginning as early as 3 months, are deeply engaged in their learning across various languages, including English, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, French, and Italian. A key area of her research investigates how language and cognitive abilities are interconnected and examines how cultural perspectives influence children's reasoning about the natural world. Collaborating with colleagues from Northwestern and the National Research Council in Argentina, she explores how young children, both from Native American and non-Native communities, learn to navigate their understanding of living things.
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